


Gun Holding-Ape

by livinginthepast



Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 05:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14230461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livinginthepast/pseuds/livinginthepast
Summary: How Dan Ashcroft started writing his Sugar Ape hit, The Rise of The Idiots.Inspired in part byRilo Kiley.





	Gun Holding-Ape

The slabs of concrete were far too over-saturated for a gloomy day in London. The different colours of grey, purple and blue melded into a colour palette that looked dirty, and definitely was going by the rat’s nest infestation Dan and his housemate, Jones, had discovered in the sewage system one night when they couldn’t get a taxi back from one of the latest clubs on Dan’s ‘to review’ list. A list that had long since run out.  
He crunched the remaining ash of his cigarette into the top of a metal bin which was conveniently placed at the end of his road. The monotony of the hangovers, the walk home from his frankly ridiculous job and the butts of cigarettes he’d placed on top of the bin felt like some kind of metaphor for a build-up he wasn’t quite expecting but was perfect for that quarter-life crisis he’d been putting off.

The quarter-life crisis which still burned away at the back of his mind under all the deadlines Sugar Ape was filling the void with. Dan knew that the eventuality of his previous Boss being fired would lead to a whole different kind of problem, which just added to the stress. His old Boss had been clear about exactly what he wanted the articles to look like. All Dan had to do was connect the dots, fill in the tick boxes, hand in pieces of rumpled papers (well, it was all e-mails nowadays), and put his name at the top. Jonatton Yeah? was a different kind of person. Much less of a controlling force, freer spirited. He had given no directions at the anticipated weekly meeting – which by the way, had been cancelled, in favour of letting the ‘journalists find something cool’. What even was cool anyway?

He unlocked the House of Jones’ door and walked into the paint splattered, clothes horse of a hallway where he took off his shoes and coat to be put gingerly on top of the ever-growing pile of Jones’ discarded garments. Jones was vaguely cool, right? He had cool fans. Idiotic people with stains from popped glow sticks on their £350 trainers, but people who seemed to be popular. He slumped on the sofa, grabbing the paracetamol packet he kept underneath the right-hand seat, dry-swallowed two pills, and laid down to think about what to write. 

About three hours later the Shoreditch twat Dan lived with swung open the door with his silver flight case filled with modified children’s toys, records and other pieces of tech which were vital to his performances at Stanley Knives. 

“Y’alright Dan?” He said, not really expecting an answer being used to Dan’s periods of sofa introspection.

When Dan responded with a grunt Jones smiled in surprise – he wasn’t going to pretend his housemate didn’t exist today, which was nice.  
Dan considered asking Jones what it was to be cool but he sounded like such a child, it’s not that he wanted to be cool – he just wanted a direction. He couldn’t make new trends and ideas appear out of thin air and pretend they were the latest craze. Fact-based journalism was far easier than story-telling. Not that the idiots who read Sugar Ape would notice any difference.   
He threw all caution to the wind, which pounded the back of his headache with no end in sight, and said in a small voice “I’m stuck with what to write.”

Jones’ girly haircut appeared in the doorway to the living room and when he realised that, yes, Dan was actually talking to him he stood in front the sofa arms open willing to listen. Dan wasn’t going to elaborate until he asked a question so he did.  
“What do you usually write?”

“Bad reviews. Shitting on whoever I’m asked to.”

“Why can’t you just do that?”

“I have no target. Our new Boss is more interested in finding out what we like to write before actually assigning us things.”

“How ‘bout you just write whatever, see what sticks y’know?”

“Because I’d rather have a focus. Look, Jones, don’t worry about it. I’ll find something. Probably.”

He turned his back to the DJ and stared at the cracks in the fake vaguely leather-ish material. He counted eight cracks in that particular section of the sofa before he heard Jones walk into the hallway – leaving Dan to his moping around. When Jones had left he turned back around. He really was feeling particularly childish today.   
Dan’s mind wandered to the idea that perhaps now was the time to get himself fired. He definitely wasn’t going to quit – that was more hassle than it was worth and seemed a bit like the new management would have won that way. He imagined the moment Jonatthon Yeah got so angry he forgot to punctuate his own name when declaring his ownership of Dan, foaming at the mouth. It was a satisfying image. 

The hatred of being at the bottom of a chain of increasingly stupid individuals spurred the switching on of a light-bulb in Dan’s head which could only be described as a petty rage that needed to escape. He reached for the pile of newspapers stacked a top his laptop and pushed them off the side. The scattered paper wouldn’t matter now but would probably piss him off later.

He started off by typing single words angrily making the keyboard jump and stutter at certain letters. Once he’d figured out how exactly he was going to present his argument that idiocy was on a scary rise he added metaphors and similes and other writing techniques he forgot the names of as soon as he stopped being a student and became a graduate.   
Venom flowed through Dan’s body to his fingers where he fulfilled his ultimate fantasy of finally being kicked out of Sugar Ape. He didn’t know where this would lead him but nothing could be worse than forever living in a world full of carbon copies of the same ridiculous trends and haircuts bundled together with slightly different voids of personalities attached.   
If this worked out as being hated by the Sugar Ape lot, it might give him the notoriety to go somewhere better – somewhere more upmarket where he could properly articulate himself and his ideas without the same one-word reviews he was used to being thrown back at him. 

It would be entertaining to see Jonatton Yeah? get what he deserved. It would be even more fun to see the entire pretend magazine go bust. Wishful thinking, he knew nothing that great could ever happen from one article; but he had to admit it was fun to imagine.

He finished the article with a jaunty tap of the enter key and fiddled with the too small for his hands trackpad to save it. He titled the email ‘Article for this week’ and attached the piece he’d named ‘Rise of The Idiots’. It was an amazing feeling of release hitting the send button and letting his vicious thoughts about his work known. He put the laptop back on the coffee table, opened. He usually kept the lid closed tightly – too embarrassed to share. But he could be proud of this, it was a jab at what his life had become dancing around London finding things idiots would find interesting. It was confirmation that he wasn’t an idiot – he could be an observer looking in and jeering at them instead of just regurgitating their ideas, their same bullshit over and over again.

He leapt off the sofa – feeling the murky grey cloud lift a little from his outlook. Perhaps, he thought, this would be the start of something positive in his life. Dan Ashcroft wasn’t a puppet anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone interested 'Shoreditch Twat' was used to describe Jones because I was traipsing through [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreditch_Twat) and it possibly inspired the show.


End file.
